I'm currently researching a management process (a proposal on my part) that could possibly throw up issues with hierarchy in teams and unfair levels of input from different members of a production team.
As a solution I'm investigating team changing and rotation, whilst those managing the project would be likely to remain static.
Does anybody have any advice or suggestions for reading etc regarding cyclical or revolving team structure for projects?
What a curious question you ask. I'm interested in how you are proposing to rotate the team? By time period, piece work??? Also, what is the reasoning behind rotating your team? Time, Money, Learning? - Very interesting.
Is it software you are producing? If so, I don't see a difference from the types of projects I've done with off shore resources - we've piece mealed the development pieces... The biggest piece of advice in that regard is that your requirements have to be rock solidly documented so that there can be no question or open to interpretation. In addition, those requirements matrix from business case, code, qa, uat, user training....
I think you are on the right track regarding keeping the managing part static. Depending on team size, at least one individual needs to have a good idea of what is happening overall.
What do you see as possible "issues" with hierarchy in teams and "unfair levels of input"?
Yvonne ParleEast Victoria Park, Western Australia, Australia
Hi Iain,
What is the management process you are researching that drives you to suggest such an approach? Using non-dedicated personnel in projects is nothing new as you know so I'm curious to understand what problem it is you're trying to solve - you mention issues with "hierarchy" and "unfair levels of input from different members of a production team" for example.
Depending on what problem it is you're trying to solve, you may chose the approach for either rotating personnel in/out of project or establishing staffing by WBS/Phase/Gate etc. (if that's what you mean by cyclical).
First thing to consider is to understand that rotation/cycling of personnel in and out of projects comes with a high overhead both in project management overhead and productiveness of the project workers. What is represented as a .25 resource on a GANTT chart, translates to .10 if you're lucky when you add the overhead of managing non-dedicated project personnel, so consider if this trade off is worth it to solve your other problems :)
